Bad Product Management – Lessons on How NOT to Build a Product

There are those videos that you’ll come across where you just know they will stick with you forever. As a product manager this is one of those videos. The Pentagon Wars movie perfectly encapsulates what can go wrong if there is too much input for a product and why a strong product manager is important.

What I learned to be the most important aspect of this video is that you must understand your target audience. The issue that this fictional Bradley vehicle faced is that there was no specific target audience. This led to it being a monstrosity that doesn’t fit any particular role. Earlier I wrote about Disney vs. Universal and how you have to fit your target audience. Don’t try and woo people who are irrelevant and too many people at once. If your product happens to fit multiple audiences then let it. If it doesn’t, don’t force it. You can either be an armored personnel carrier, or a scout vehicle, or a missile launcher, but most of the times you can’t be all three.

Mark is the Lead Author & Editor of Spectechular Blog. Mark established the Spectechular blog to create a source for news and discussion about some of the issues, challenges, news, and ideas relating to Product Management.